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Just got back from a week long vacation in Myrtle Beach with the family. Took a few BRF member's advice and tried fossil hunting along the shoreline. Unfortunately, sifting down in the water didn't work. Maybe I wasn't doing something right, but I couldn't dig down deep enough to get to any gravel/shell material without the waves filling the hole back in immediately. So, I resorted to surface collecting. This wasn't as productive as I would have liked, but to my surprise I actually found a couple nice teeth; one nice 1 1/8" Great White and a Sandbar (C. plumbeus) shark tooth. What's interesting is that these were the first two teeth I found, up on the beach in a small smattering of some shell and pebble material, maybe 6ft wide and 20ft long. I also found a large tiger shark and a few sandtigers, but they were really black and worn. The first two teeth are actually "whitish" and the GW has some marble coloring - see below.

Due to higher than normal tides, the beach pretty much stayed shell/pebble free all week. I asked one of the life guards about collecting, and he said that sometimes the beach looks like it is "paved" with shells and pebbles, and that's when folks really clean up and find a ton of stuff! I saw many people collecting fossils, always holding a small baggie or something similar. One guy had about 50 small (under 1/2") dark shark teeth, mostly carcharhinus and sandtigers, but he also had a nice black 1" Great White, and he said the day before he found a 1.5" GW way up high on the beach in the dry part.

The only light colored teeth I saw all week were the two I found, so I think the ligther colored teeth must be rarer than the dark colored teeth. Other than shark teeth I didn't see any other types of fossils. I don't think I would drive the 458 miles again (one way) just to hit the beaches for fossil collecting, but it sure was nice to find some teeth while on vacation.

Hey Daryl, nice finds! That great white has some awesome coloring and an interesting shape to it. Its definitely strange on the condition of teeth you find along the beach. Here in NC I have only gone to the beach looking a few times, the first two trips I didnt find anything, but from talking with people and seeing other peoples finds I gave it another try and one day found a croc tooth, and arrowhead and several smaller teeth. The croc tooth had an awesome color to it, black, white and brown. It was small though. And of course a little beat up. Then another day I went out and managed a wave worn chub, which was the usual gray and black, and many many worn and beaten gray and black teeth, but then there was the few that werent like that including a half a meg blade which was brown, a modern tiger which still had a brown root and a light gray blade and a galeocerdo contortus in the same condition. As well as some broken and worn hemis. All my finds other then the chub and the broken meg I gave away to some kids who followed me around asking what I was doing. But I really think that the different coloration depends on just how long they have been tumbling in the waves, how long they had washed out and how quickly they made it to shore. I am waiting for the first hurricane of the season before I really try to do any beach collecting.. I still prefer creeks and mines to the beach as of yet. Maybe one day I will have a change of luck at the beach though...

But again, I have never found a beach tooth with that kind of coloring, so those are awesome finds... you can tell they didnt spend much time in the waves and got washed onto the beach pretty quick. Man you got lucky. The only shark teeth I found last time I was at myrtle beach was in the gift shops...

What's funny about the GW tooth is that I found it in the late afternoon down near one of the piers where there were hundreds of footprints all over the area. Folks were looking for teeth and shells but overlooked this tooth, maybe because of its light coloring. I think most folks are looking for dark colored objects, which obviously stand out better against the light colored sand.

As for gift shop teeth, I saw a ton of Moroccan teeth on necklaces in every souvenir shop we went in. One shop though had a large jar of beach collected teeth - all dark and worn and under 1/2". Looked like carcharhinus teeth mostly. They were 59 cents each, or 2 for a $1. They also had a few 3" Megs for sale, all over $400. They looked like Megs from the Cooper river or something of the sort. One store had Moroccan Otodus teeth in the 2" range for $40 each. They had lots of dust on them.

Being so close to the Low Country I killed me that I couldn't give DW a call to hook up for a hunt somewhere. With only one vehicle though I would have left the family stranded without a vehicle for a day unless I rented one while I was there. It was neat seeing the different names that I'ev only read about on BRF - like "Ashley furniture store", "Pee Dee Rd", "Low Country Real Estate", "Santee Construction", etc. Everytime I saw one of these names I recognized, I would say to the family, hey, see that there name, that store is named after a fossil formation! After a while I stopped because they weren't at all impressed.

The highlights were fun in the sun with my boys, collecting a few teeth, hitting a couple shows like "One", and a few good meals like Hooters wings! The only thing I didn't care for too much is Route#17. We seemed to live on that road for everything, and there's a traffic light every 100 feet it seems. We had to leave our beach house about an hour early just to get somewhere, but I guess most beach vacation spots (Ocean City, Nags Head, ...) are the same way.

Yep, that's the same with me Daryl, my vacation isn't a shark's tooth vacation, it's a vacation that I get to do some beach collecting on. There is so much to do at Myrtle Beach that takes up most of the day. Fortunately for me, my wife like's to sleep in so if I get up early I can get four or five hours of collecting in each day.

I've promised to post what I've found there but my camera is missing so I can't post a pic 'til I can take one. My house right now looks like one of those messy house TV shows, so that camera can be anywhere.

What avenue were you looking in? I went last week too and found a few broken gws but nothing light colored like that. I figured out a new technique when I was down there this year though. If you dig a hole really really quick before it fills up with sand youll hit a pretty nice shell layer. Thats how I found the broken gws.

We stayed in a beachfront house up on North Ocean Blvd. i nNorth Myrtle Beach. Across the street (behind us essentially) was 52nd Ave. We were essentially in between two piers. One pier to the north was about 3/4 of a mile at the very northern end almost where the beach seems to end. The other pier to our south had a lot of folks fishing from it and also had a store at the very beginning of it. This pier is closer to where Rt#9 comes into North Myrtle Beach. It sort of stunk that we had to pay $1.50 per person just to walk out on to the pier, but we were curious as to what folks were catching so we paid.

I saw folks finding teeth at almost every location between these two piers which is pretty much where I stuck to. I thought if I walked out to like waist deep water that I might eventually find like a shelf that had some gravel/shells but I never found anything like it. I didn't feel like venturing out too far. There was one small shark sighting near the southern pier while I was there. The life guard I spoke had been there for almsot 3 years and said it was the first time he had to clear the water due to a shark. He said it was probably only 3 or 4 ft long and didn't know what kind it might have been. He said the larger sharks don't come in close to shore. I stayed in close or high on the beach just to make sure.